It appears the server is trying to use a feature not yet available in the version you built. I think thread pooling was added in 6.x as you can see by the commit diff I've included in #3 below... I think if you specify the proper "no-threads" option for the configure options you should be able to run the built version...I suggest that because of the error info in the output you provided: "Unknown option to thread_handling: pool-of-threads Alternatives are: 'one-thread-per-connection','no-threads" and because of the following links I found in a Google search. 1) http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=34394 2) http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/6.0/en/server-system-variables.html#sysvar_t... 3) http://lists.mysql.com/commits/65043 ::: particularly ::: === modified file 'sql/mysqld.cc' --- a/sql/mysqld.cc 2009-01-26 16:03:39 +0000 +++ b/sql/mysqld.cc 2009-01-29 21:17:59 +0000 @@ -547,6 +547,8 @@ ulong query_buff_size, slow_launch_time, ulong open_files_limit, max_binlog_size, max_relay_log_size; ulong slave_net_timeout, slave_trans_retries; my_bool slave_allow_batching; +my_bool allow_slave_start= TRUE; +LEX_CSTRING reason_slave_blocked; ulong slave_exec_mode_options; const char *slave_exec_mode_str= "STRICT"; ulong thread_cache_size=0, thread_pool_size= 0; 4) http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=34399 Hopefully that will help you in identifying a fix. -Adam